UTAMARO: A Chorus of Birds (English and Japanese Edition) - encuadernado, tapa blanda

The "Book of Birds" was published about 1790, when the Japanese colored wood-block print was at its finest and the artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) was at the height of his career. The most widely admired painter and print designer of his day, Utamaro is probably best known in the west for the sensuous beauty of the female face and figure that he perfected in single-sheet color prints. Although he often depicted the everyday world of housewives and young mothers, his favorite subjects were the women of the Yoshiwara, the licensed pleasure quarters on the outskirts of Edo (modern Tokyo), a world he knew and loved intimately. By the 18th century the center of Japanese culture had shifted from the old capital of Kyoto, home of the imperial family and titled aristocracy, to the burgeoning new metropolis of Edo. Here a prosperous and well-educated urban populace, comprising samurai intelligentsia, shopkeepers, artists, and craftsmen, stimulated the production of illustrated printed books. One of the largest book publishers was Tsutaya Juzaburo (1748-1797), a major patron of promising print artists and novelists. He and Utamaro becomes close friends. Like many in Edo, he enjoyed composing 'kyōka', the comic verse form that was just reaching the pinnacle of its popularity and brilliance. He began publishing the 'kyōka' anthologies using Utamaro as his principal illustrator. The "Book of Birds" is one of the great achievements of their collaboration. Entitled 'Momo-chidori kyōka awase' (literally "One Hundred Birds in a Competition of Humorous Poetry"). A CHORUS OF BIRDS reproduces in facsimile size and in the fold-out format of the original a copy of Utamaro's "Momo-chidori kyōka awase" in the collection of The Metropolita